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Learning Styles and You

Learning Styles and You

Contributing Writer – Ina Segnit

If you’re like most people, you have preferences and tendencies toward certain things or actions. Your personality traits, habits you have developed over time and the behaviors that have worked for you in the past have shaped you as an adult. Now, you are going back to school. Exactly what kind of learner are you? Have you ever taken the time to analyze your successes and try to replicate that in other situations? Did you ever figure out what worked best for you when learning something new, either in the classroom or in other aspects of your life? Whether you have or have not, your success in school is directly related to how well you are able to assimilate and retain information.

The most straightforward way of looking at different learning styles is on a continuum. How often do you use a particular strategy in a learning situation? Your choices or preferences help define you as a person and can help you understand how YOU learn best.

You may want to look at learning as an informational processing system. For example, information comes in, something is done with that information, and you create a product or change your behavior.
Look at it as your own personal post office – “M” material COMES IN, you “A” act upon this “I” information, and after such action, “L” learning has taken place.
This is your own, personal “M.A.I.L.” system –

Materials:

New information, data, research, experience, models, maps, lectures, writings, demonstrations

Act:

The process of assimilating and retaining new information via studying, memorization, analysis, integration, reasoning, drawing inferences.

Information:

Mental processes that categorize information into concepts, ideas, theories, skills

Learning:

New behaviors based on the acquisition of information in the form of, skills, aptitude and achievement, performance, memory.

You in fact have been using this process for a long time. The only thing new here is an awareness of how you learn. By taking time to figure this out, you can analyze what works best for you and then you can figure out how to maximize learning. This is important to figure out now because, as an adult student, your time is more precious. Having to meet competing responsibilities of family, work and school, you have to utilize the time you have to study and complete assignments in a way that maximizes the effectiveness of your studies as well as maximizing the amount of information you are able to retain. In fact, we hope you realize that you are already utilizing your MAIL system by reading our material, seeking assistance from our counselors and taking advantage of all the educational services we have to offer. The most important thing you can gain from StuFund is information. This website is chocked full of information, tools and ideas you can use. And you can always contact us for more specific answers to your questions.

Individual learning styles are rarely singular processes of information acquisition. Rather, they are a combination of strategies, modalities and styles specific to the way you interact with the world. The best test of learning is your ability to be able to perform over repeated occasions. And the real test is when you are able to transmit that knowledge to someone else. Then you know you have really mastered it.

Here’s a situation that you may be able to relate to:

The power went out while you weren’t home. Your kids are in school and you have every single clock in your house reading “12:00, 12; 00, 12:00. 12:00”. Ok, let’s try to set one clock. So, what do you do?

  1. Find the directions for the first clock you want to reset.
  2. Call your spouse/friend/child to get instructions on how to set the clock.
  3. Wait until someone else comes home and fixes the clocks.How you go about resolving this problem says a lot about how you problem solve and how you approach learning. The first response is to use your own resources and information available on hand to resolve the problem. The second assumes that while you may not have the information available, you have the resources to gain that information from someone else. The third approach retreats from acquiring new knowledge, rather falling back on someone else to solve the problem. This is an opportunity to broaden one’s knowledge base for not just the present circumstance, but future problems that arise. Learning to reset one clock, prepares you to reset all of them. It also leaves you prepared for future blackouts. And at the end of the ordeal, you have not only gained knowledge but experienced the success at having dealt with another challenge

Research tells us that people learn best from a variety of strategies and through many modalities. Also, it is my learned opinion that with age and experience comes knowledge you’ve gained from your success over the years. How you achieved success, becomes part of your strategy for all future endeavors. You should utilize these strengths, while gathering all of the information and skills you’ll need to attempt new challenges. Starting something new or approaching something you are unfamiliar with requires you to move outside of your comfort zone. But the reward of developing new skills, having new experiences, possessing new competencies is worth the risk…

One word of caution here: Sometimes, we assume that the way we’ve always done things is the best way. After all, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! What you are really trying to convince yourself, is, that it is much easier, safer in fact, to keep doing things the way you always did. Starting something new, like going back to school as an adult causes a lot of anxiety for the average person. It feels safer to go with what you know. Take a minute to ask yourself if you have experienced more success or failure in achieving your goals…

If you are not happy with the outcome of those efforts, don’t be afraid to try something new. For example, if you tend to wait until the last minute to get things done and then you find yourself making excuses or blaming others, be aware that this kind of attitude will get you in trouble real fast. If you plan on succeeding at school, changing the way you handle challenge is very important. You notice I said challenge, not stress. Researchers point out that successful people welcome challenge rather than seeing it as stress… To succeed, you have to be willing to address those behaviors that have kept you from achieving your goals in the past.

Procrastination – is only for “crass” individuals who think things will fall into their laps”. Successful people are not lucky. Success’s luck has more to do with planning and opportunity. Keep in mind that both planning and opportunity imply action, so calling it luck is the outward appearance of a lot of hard work on the inside. This is a actually a compliment for those of you who can complete series of actions without anyone ever seeing you sweat. What looks easy or lucky to someone else is actually the culmination of a great deal of planning, effort, and risk taking on your part. All of this hinges on you having the courage to get up, apply yourself and make things happen.

Something to think about:

WHAT KIND OF Learner Are You?

Active vs. Reflective Learners

Active Learners like to try things out.

Reflective Learners like to think it through first.

Sensing Vs. Intuitive Learners

Sensing Learners learn facts and see how information connects to the real world. .

Intuitive Learners like discovering possibilities and relationships from theories.

Visual vs. Verbal Learners

Visual Learners remember best what they see, pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time line, films and demonstrations

Verbal Learners get more out of words, written and spoken explanations.

Sequential vs. Global Learners

Sequential Learners like order and do things in a step by step motion to find solutions.

Global Learners look for the big picture and then find new ways to put things together.